Live From New York - James H. Miller [48]
BERNIE BRILLSTEIN:
I knew Belushi was going to be a hit when Paul McCartney called and offered me $6,000 for Belushi to perform his Joe Cocker impression at his birthday party. John was making $800 or $1,000 a show. Six thousand dollars to sing like Joe Cocker? Oh my God, oh my God, he was so happy — not the money, just singing for McCartney. Oh my God.
LORNE MICHAELS:
I remember exactly how much money I made in 1975. I made $115,000, and it was more money than I’d ever imagined. I’d been offered the season before four Flip Wilson shows, four specials, for a little over a hundred thousand dollars and I said I would do one. The experience wasn’t a special one for me. It wasn’t a show I was terribly proud of, but it did a 46 share, and what I remember learning from that was if you did a show you really cared about, it didn’t matter if anybody watched it. But if you did a show that wasn’t any good, it was much better if everyone saw it. If it was highly rated, you knew you’d be able to work again.
JEAN DOUMANIAN, Associate Producer:
I didn’t start working for Saturday Night Live until the eleventh show in 1975, because I had been working on the first show called Saturday Night Live, with Howard Cosell on ABC. We were canceled after the seventeenth show, and Lorne called and asked if he could use the title of the show.
CRAIG KELLEM:
That was a signature issue as far as Lorne was concerned: he wanted to call his show Saturday Night Live. It totally pissed him off that the title was taken by Howard Cosell. And when the other show went off the air and he got the title back, I kind of chuckled inside, thinking how Lorne had decided that he wanted that title and he was going to get that title. And you know what? He ended up with that title. That’s Lorne Michaels to a T.
JEAN DOUMANIAN:
Lorne had one corner office. And I had the other corner office. I liked Lorne a lot, we got along very well. But I was never intimidated by him. And I was never part of the family. I didn’t do drugs, and I had a life outside the show.
LORNE MICHAELS:
The Desi Arnaz show in February was a great show. He wouldn’t stay at our normal hotel; he had to stay at the Waldorf. The great moment was when he was doing “Babalu” live on the air with Desi Jr. I was in the control room watching and we were trying to figure out when to cut away. He throws himself into it so much, I’m like seeing his lips turn blue. He’s going into it totally, like he’s thirty. And I’m thinking, “Oh my God, he’s going to have a coronary. What happens if he dies on live TV?” And so we finally cut away to commercial.
JANE CURTIN:
There were huge highs and huge lows. I think that because of the talent, and because of the people’s temperaments, you could have these incredible moments of sheer exhilaration and excitement, and then moments where you just feel like you’re a pill, you’re a tiny little piece of lint. You feel as though you don’t deserve air. So the highs and lows were huge, but there was a middle ground, because the show had to go on. At eleven-thirty, you had to put all of that stuff aside and hit the ground running and do what you were trained to do — and, hopefully, have a good time. More often than not, you did.
LILY TOMLIN:
Never, never, never, never would it occur to me that I could teach them something about comedy. Comedy is so personal and so individual, and no, I would never have the attitude that I was there to teach or something. Oh my God, no. Some of that has been written at different times — not about them specifically, but my part in comedy, let’s say — but it would be like me telling someone how to perform or something. It would never occur to me.
Laraine was always good. And of course Gilda was a very adorable person. I don’t know Chevy really well, but I’ve always liked Chevy. And Jane Curtin — I was never close to her and I don’t know that anyone was, but while the other girls were just kind of spinning around her, Jane was always just kind of centered, and ironically she’s the one that’s had the